Blood and Salt

by Barbara Sapergia

  He’s aware in a distant way of marled grey eyes staring at him through hair like thin, matted straw from Zmiya’s dark corner. Zmiya looks like a half-starved rat. Or a scarecrow. Strakhopud.

  After a while he begins to hear the voices around him, swirling through the cavernous room like wind-driven snow. Voices loud or soft, high or low, all speaking Ukrainian. At the table near Taras’s bunk, Yuriy’s arguing with Myroslav, a schoolteacher in his late twenties, about hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the last strong leader of the independent Ukrainian Cossack communities in the seventeenth century. They must have been looking at Bohdan’s carving.

  Myroslav has straight black hair combed back from a long, pale face. Thick black eyebrows and moustache. Long thin hands and a serious look. In fact at first Taras thought he was far too serious. But his rare smiles transform him. Then he looks like the icon of a saint. His manner is restrained. No harsh or careless word leaves his lips. And yet, Taras thinks, if he were to get really angry, he might be fearsome.

  Myroslav says Khmelnytsky made a mistake in allying himself with the Russians.

  Yuriy grins. “Maybe so. Anyway, my favourite hero is the one I grew up hearing about. Ustym Karmaliuk.”

  Myroslav looks puzzled. Taras has never heard of him either.

  “Ha! You don’t know him, do you!” For a moment Yuriy himself looks like some hero of old, with a vitality drawn from the black soil of Ukraïna. “And you a teacher!”

  “I teach arithmetic.” Myroslav runs a hand through the thick hair. “I don’t claim to know all the Ukrainian heroes.”

  “So I see. Well, our Karmaliuk was a peasant rebel. He had thousands of followers. The Polish and Russian landlords were afraid to take a crap at night.”

  Ihor comes closer and sits down on Yuriy’s bunk. “Don’t forget our Oleksa Dovbush, the Hutsul hero. Stole from the Polish landlords and helped the peasants.”

  “Dovbush I know about,” Myroslav says. “He’s like the famous English bandit, Robin Hood. Stole from the rich, gave to the poor. Yuriy’s Karmaliuk also sounds a lot like him.”

  “Karmaliuk wanted us to have our own country,” Yuriy says. “And some day we will.”

  “I hope we will,” Myroslav says.

  Yuriy came to Canada as a young man, Myroslav as a boy who’d just finished high school. They both think of themselves as Canadian now, but they don’t forget where they came from either. A part of their identity will always be Ukrainian, and until Ukraine is a free country, there will always be a sadness in each of them.

  The outer door opens and cold air blasts into the room. Bullard and Andrews come in, followed by Taveley and a new guard, Private Randall. A stocky man of medium height leans heavily on Andrews. His coat is open, his hair blown across his forehead. A bulge inside his torn shirt front must be a bandage. Blood has seeped through to the shirt. Even surrounded by guards, you’d have to say he looks dangerous.

  As the small group nears the centre of the bunkhouse, Taras happens to gaze right at the man, into intense dark eyes below peaked black brows. He looks like an infuriated owl; or a dissolute priest. Or a madman. His bright eyes, full of demands, seem to laugh at everything around him. Black hair, salted with silver, hangs in tendrils around his face. A deep cleft marks his chin.

  He must have tried to escape. Why isn’t he in the guardhouse, then? Must be full already. Or maybe they wanted to keep him away from the men he ran off with.

  Taveley and Randall prod the prisoner with their rifle butts, in the direction of an empty bunk, near Taras’s. The man stumbles, then turns on them, wild as a summer storm.

  “Don’t do that,” he says fiercely, in lightly accented English. “I’m not going to run away, boys. I’ve done that now.”

  “Just keep moving,” Taveley says. “Agitator.”

  “Bloody Bolshevik,” says Randall. He looks like he just woke up and has no idea where he is or how he got there.

  “Well. You really know your politics,” the prisoner says. “Most people don’t even know what a Bolshevik is. I, however, am a radical socialist.”

  “Right there, Bolshie.” Randall points his bayonet at the empty bunk. “Your new hotel room.”

  Will the new prisoner guess that the man who had that bunk died? No one knew Tomak had tuberculosis when he came to camp, but one morning he couldn’t get out of bed. Better, Taras thinks, if the radical socialist doesn’t know.

  Randall tosses a canvas bag and a blanket onto the bunk. Suddenly the steam goes out of him. He glances at the internees who have drawn closer to listen. Taras could swear he looks scared. He must have thought the prisoners would be scared of him. Now he doesn’t know how to act.

  The black-haired man, the Bolshie, sits down, peers around. All the men in the bunkhouse are watching him. The guards would never have given him an audience like this if they’d thought about it. He feels the area over his wound. Blood comes off on his hand.

  “Sure could use a doctor, boys.”

  “Doctor’s off today,” says Bullard. “Maybe tomorrow.” He looks uncomfortable. So does Andrews.

  “You’re okay,” says Taveley. “Fresh blood’ll keep the wound clean.” He also looks like he can’t wait to get away.

  “Good to know. Here I thought I was going to bleed to death while you guys were off drinking and playing cards.” The Bolshie’s dark eyes sweep over the guards.

  “I’d shut up if I were you.” Angry again, Randall points to Bullard and Andrews. “They know about you. They’re not gonna take any chances.”

  “Be fair,” the wounded man says. “Did I hurt anybody? No. Wouldn’t you run away if you could?”

  “Shut up! We don’t care about being fair.”

  “If you want to see the doctor tomorrow, don’t make trouble,” Taveley says wearily.

  “Me?” The black eyebrows lift to even sharper points. “I’ll be a lamb.” He’s wearing them out with his talk. Even wounded and bleeding, he’s enjoying baiting them.

  “You’d better be,” Randall sneers, but Taras can see he’s happy to be leaving. The Bolshie’s making him feel stupid.

  “Could you just go now,” Andrews says. “These are our prisoners. We’ll take it from here.”

  “Yeah sure,” Randall says. “But this guy needs to change his ideas.”

  “Yeah, and it’s not your job, it’s ours.” Bullard looks ready to burst. “Bad enough we’re landed with this new guy. I mean, he’s obviously a troublemaker –”

  “Lunatic, if you ask me,” Randall says.

  “Didn’t.”

  “Oh.” But now Randall can’t leave it alone. “Still, how do you tell with these Ruthenians or Galicians, or whatever they are?”

  “Yes, well,” Andrews sounds very strained, “but crazy or not, we don’t hold with bringing in a wounded man who hasn’t seen a doctor.”

  “Come on,” Taveley says. “Let’s get out of here.” He grabs the younger man’s arm.

  Randall turns to offer a salute to Andrews, but forgets that his bayonet is in the way. Bullard jumps aside, a hand shielding his face.

  Taras can’t help smiling.

  “Private!” Andrews says. “That will be all.”

  “Sir!” Randall marches for the door. Taveley shrugs and follows him out.

  “Christ’s sake!” Bullard says. “Asshole almost took out my eye.” He and Andrews light cigarettes and look around the room.

  Andrews speaks in a low voice, but Taras hears. “You’ve got your flask, haven’t you?”

  Bullard points to his coat pocket. “Couple of slugs and we’ll sleep like babies.” They laugh. “Goddamn it, though, it’s starting to give me a pain in my gut.”

  Interesting, Taras thinks: Bullard in pain. He turns from the guards to the new guy.

  The prisoners are silent, unsure how to speak to the newcomer. He catches Taras’s eye. Speaks in Ukrainian.

  “You want to ask me what it’s like, don’t you?” Taras can’t think how to answer. “Escaping, I mean
. Don’t you want to know what it’s like?”

  “I wouldn’t mind. What is it like?”

  “It’s grand.” The prisoner laughs, and for a moment Taras imagines a sharp wind and the scent of pine. “You know, just to be alone for a bit. In charge of your own body, your own thoughts. Once we got into the forest, it was like no one else existed. Just us and a million trees. Shall I go on?”

  Taras nods. “Proshu. Please do. It’s...very interesting.”

  “I’ve no idea how they snuck up on us. Oleh and Slava were making too much noise, that’s for sure, and all of a sudden, Taveley’s screaming not to move or he’ll stick me with his bayonet.” All eyes are on him now and he knows it.

  “I suppose I shouldn’t have laughed. I honestly thought no one would be that stupid. That unnecessarily brutal. Know what I mean?”

  Taras is at a loss for a reply. This man seems to talk for the sheer pleasure of it. Not just to tell what happened, but to pin it down, analyze it.

  “You see, then,” the man goes on, “how even a wise and experienced person can sometimes be wrong. That pig’s fart Randall got mad when I laughed, and before Taveley could even think about moving, Randall stuck me with his stinking bayonet.”

  Again he waits. Myroslav and Yuriy draw closer.

  “What was that like?” Yuriy asks.

  “It’s awful to have your body sliced open! Your blood gushing out! I was terrified. And the pain! Christ! I wouldn’t have believed it. I mean, I’ve been beaten up in my time, but this... Scientifically, I suppose it’ll all turn out to be worthwhile, because I’ve never been stabbed before. So now I’ll know.”

  Again he waits for a response. “I’ll know to avoid it!” He laughs. A few people laugh with him, or smile, anyway. But they’re a little afraid the guy is insane and will hurt himself with all this frenzied talk. Or hurt someone else.

  “Don’t worry about me. I’m probably in shock. I mean, I’m so amazed! And outraged! That Randall would do such a thing. Not that I liked him or trusted him up till then, but I never thought... Anyway, turns out the pig’s fart never wounded a person before. God, he looked sick when he saw what he’d done. Snuck off and threw up. Oh now, here’s something you should always remember. Watch where you chuck up. I mean, he had the whole goddamn forest and he puked on his boots!”

  “Excuse me, friend,” Myroslav begins.

  “Name’s Tymko,” the newcomer says. “I come from near Kharkiv but I moved to Kyiv and then Ternopil. I’ve been a miner in Donetsk and worked on a farm in Halychyna. Drove a team to help supply the Austrian garrison at Peremyshl. Spent good money to get a man to arrange Austrian papers for me. Just think, if I still had Russian papers, I wouldn’t be in this hole. But how could I tell them I had false papers?” He grins.

  “Oh, and in Canada I’ve worked in a coal mine and on the Canadian Pacific Railway. I’m good at everything I’ve set my hand to. I’ve helped organize a union and a strike and –”

  “Would you like a glass of water, Tymko?” Myroslav asks politely.

  “Who are you then?” Tymko demands.

  “I’m Myroslav. I teach school. I mean, I used to.”

  “Professor!” Tymko smiles. “Excellent! It would be very helpful if you could bring me water.” When water comes, he drinks like a man who’s been lost in the desert for a week. Or in the woods.

  “You can get very thirsty in the woods in winter,” he goes on. “Too little water is what turns your shit to stone. That and the lousy food. There’s never enough bulk to keep things moving.”

  “Why aren’t you in the guardhouse?” Yuriy asks.

  “Too full. And they were probably afraid I’d beat up the other guys for making noise and giving away where we were. But you know what? I wouldn’t have. I would only have talked to them about it.”

  Taras looks around and sees others also wondering which would be harder to take – getting beaten up, or the thorough scolding Tymko would have given them. Not that he’s in any shape for beating people up.

  Yuriy walks over to the guards, who’ve been watching Tymko hold court, and asks something. At first the guards don’t move. Then Andrews comes over to Tymko’s bunk, offers him a hand-rolled cigarette and even lights it for him.

  “Thank you,” Tymko says in English, and sucks the smoke deep into his lungs. “This will help me sleep.” Andrews shrugs and walks away.

  “This is the great thing in Canada,” Tymko goes on in Ukrainian. “They stick you with a bayonet one moment and offer you a cigarette the next. Keeps you on your toes. Keeps you interested in life.”

  He smokes the cigarette to a blackened scrap and grinds it out on the floor. Looks around the room as if he’s trying to memorize every person and every thing in it. Nods at the men nearest him: Myroslav, Taras, Yuriy, Ihor. Bohdan the carver.

  “Good to meet you all,” he says. “We’ll be friends, I think.”

  Without another word he glances sideways at the worn and grimy pillow, then at his boots. His head drifts downward, and Taras jumps up and lifts his booted feet onto the bunk. When Taras starts to unlace the heavy work boots, Tymko dismisses him with a wave of the hand.

  “I’ll rest now,” he says. “Tomorrow, we’ll see.” Yuriy throws the blanket over him. Moments later he’s so lost to the scene around him that he could be mistaken for dead, except for his raspy breathing. Taras hopes the man’s mind is far away, in some beautiful place of his dreams. He hopes the bleeding’s stopped.

  Other men turn in and Taras gives up on his letter. Andrews and Bullard take a final look around the room and go out into the night, locking the door behind them. Taras wonders what he’d do if one night they forgot to lock it.

  He notices Zmiya, huddled in his bunk at the end of the room, staring out the frosted window at the moon, cat’s eyes glinting in the frozen light.

  CHAPTER 5

  Would you go back?

  A week later the prisoners notice that Taveley and Randall are gone from camp, replaced by a couple of baffled looking reservists who barely know which end of their rifles to pick up. Word spreads that they’ve been sent to another camp. Is it because Tymko was stabbed? Tymko says yes: bayonetting prisoners doesn’t look good. Ship out the guys who did it. Out of sight, out of mind.

  Taras sits on his bunk that evening trying to finish the letter he was writing the day Tymko came. Bud Andrews stopped him earlier in the evening, in the supper line: an interpreter has been found. Mail is starting to flow. At first Taras thought he’d get letters from his parents right away, but Andrews says it won’t happen that fast. Huge piles of mail have to be checked.

  Taras reads the few lines he’s managed to put down, trying to think what to say next. Nothing comes. A dark shadow forms in his gut that tells him his letters will never be received or answered. He wants to cry like a child.

  The men clumped around the stove arguing – Myroslav, Yuriy, Tymko, Ihor – are getting louder. They’re always arguing. Ihor doesn’t say much, but he listens so hard it’s almost like talking. Each voice, each vocabulary, is a little different according to the region they come from. Taras understands why they argue. Because it’s something to do, because they have such diverging opinions and because it creates something almost like warmth.

  Because all this has to mean something.

  Tonight they argue about whether Ukraine will ever become a free and independent country. There is no doubt in Myroslav’s mind. His eyes look hard and bright as he confronts Yuriy.

  “Ukraine will be a country one day. No question.”

  Taras likes his certainty. When Myroslav speaks with conviction, it’s hard not to get swept along by him. He speaks well, and by now he’s become part of their group and they all know his story. His father was a teacher, so he went to school longer than most children in his village in the province of Halychyna. In Canada he went to university. Not many Ukrainian Canadians have done that, but Myro always knew he would. He is living proof that they can learn and change.
/>   “I’ll believe it when I see it,” Yuriy says defiantly.

  This is how they go on. Yuriy has also told his friends his story. How he grew up near Kamyanets-Podilsky, a town a thousand years old, built on an island of rock high above a river.

  “You can only get there one way,” he explained. “You have to cross a narrow bridge of rock.” He explains that this made it a natural fortress coveted by the Poles, Turks and Russians who have ruled it in turn for a thousand years. The Russians were in charge when Yuriy lived there.

  Still, after all that time, all those rulers, people knew they were Ukrainians. So for Yuriy to be so skeptical about a free Ukraine makes you stop and think. Yuriy left his birthplace as a youngest son who would never inherit land. Went to Bukovyna and worked at anything he could get; became a peddler going from village to village. Got married and became an Austrian citizen. Like Tymko, he came to Canada with what turned out to be the wrong papers.

  “So that’s your answer,” Myroslav says. “Ukraine will never be a country.”

  Yuriy looks embarrassed. “Okay, maybe I do believe Ukraine will be a country. No, more than that – it is a country. I already live in it. In my mind, you know?”

  “Lucky fellow,” Tymko says. “What’s it like?”

  Yuriy thinks. “It’s solid, my Ukraine. It feels good around me. Like a warm, well-built house.” His face relaxes and his eyes shine with tears.

  “Excellent description,” Tymko says. “Every Ukrainian should have a little poetry in him.”

  Ihor smiles and nods his head.

  “It holds Ukrainians from many territories. Some Polish, some Austrian, some Russian. Different kinds of people, but all of them Ukrainian. Wherever they happen to be. When they meet, they know each other.”

  Taras tries to figure out what kind of country this would be. A country in his imagination, perhaps. Like a beautiful painting of golden fields, green, swaying trees, pleasant, healthy people. A lovely picture of a country.